[CQ-Contest] Evolving scoring systems

[W0MU]

Gamers have skills.  They are quite different than radio skills and they 
are quite amazing.  They are as good at jumping off a building and 
shooting you from afar as you are at breaking a cluster pileup or 
working 300 qsos an hour.  Game or contest?  They are nearly identical.

There are rankings and very serious online gaming "groups".  They take 
the "game" quite seriously and what they do they do very well.

I think contesting and gaming have more in common than most understand.

Your thoughts about teams is a great one.  The only strategy in 
contesting is maximizing score.  Either work more people or more mults.  
While there is some strategy in how that can be done as you say there is 
absolutely NO teamwork with the teams.




On 12/2/2013 11:15 AM, Jack Haverty. wrote:
> Ken,
>
> Thanks for an interesting look into another world!  I think your analysis
> is right on target.
>
> It seems to me that there's another difference between our "Radiosport"
> activities and the worlds of Guild Wars et al.    It's the difference
> between a Contest and a Game.
>
> By "Contest" I mean a competition which seeks to rank its participants in
> terms of their demonstrated prowess at something.  It might focus on radio
> skills (our contests), or physical ability (think athletics), or mental
> ability (think chess tournaments), or whatever.  A Contest is designed to
> test some skill.
>
> By "Game", I mean a competition which seeks to rank its participants only
> in terms of their performance in playing the game.   The skill they measure
> with points is simply the skill at playing the game.  A Game is designed to
> maximize fun.
>
> Of course, both Contests and Games can involve the need for strategy and
> tactics, and serve to exercise our mental and physical abilities.  But
> Games are more fun, for more players, than Contests.   So more people
> participate, to play more than to compete.
>
> It might be interesting if you asked your son to find some of his other
> Gaming friends who also have a ham license forgotten in some drawer to get
> together and design a Game where the playing field is ham radio.  No
> preconceived notions about what such a game is, just a blank slate.  Using
> what they know about games, how would they play a game using radio?
> Scoring not trying to measure radio skill or level an uneven playing field,
> or preserve old records, but just designed to make it fun.  They might find
> the task of inventing such a game to be an interesting challenge.
>
> They might have some interesting ideas about introducing the "social"
> aspect of Games into the radio playing field to increase the fun.  For
> example, in many of our contests we have the notion of teams.   But other
> than adding all of their scores together, it doesn't seem to me that teams
> today do any coordination during a contest.   They're called a "team", but
> they're not acting as a team, they're just lone players out on the field,
> and may never even encounter each other.  Radio contests with teams and
> something like "voice chat" to actually behave as a coordinated
> multi-player force - that might be interesting and fun - even with today's
> scoring schemes in existing contests.   Who has the best team strategy and
> tactics...?
>
> Your son and friends could invite us old crusty radio experts to play in
> their radio Game, and we'd all enjoy the fun of them beating the pants off
> us...
>
> 73,
> /Jack de K3FIV
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 4:36 AM, Ken Low <kenke3x at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "I am not attempting to solve any issues with a particular contest.  My
>> scoring comments then emphasized by Mark, are being suggested as a means to
>> sell radio contesting to a huge group of younger people who
>> love to compete using computers playing online games.
>>
>> Aren't the amount of logs being sent in a function of the internet
>> reaching almost every location on the planet?  Participation should be up
>> too as I think we have more amateurs in the world than we ever had.
>>
>> Making scoring more interesting or dangling carrots in front of
>> participants has been a proven method in online gaming.  See the series of
>> articles recently published in NCJ.  We can't fix the age problem unless we
>> can interest younger people.
>>
>> Mike W0MU"
>>
>>
>> If the goal is to attract new, younger, 'Millennial-type' participants to
>> Radiosport, minor changes like distance-based scoring won't move the
>> needle.   Here's why:
>>
>> My son Patrick, K3PAL got his General class license when he was 13, with
>> lots of help from me.   He tried a few contests on Phone and RTTY but it
>> did not stick - not complex enough to hold his interest.   Many real
>> challenges of contesting come at the advanced levels (band selection,
>> propagation, Run vs. S&P, off times, etc.) which for beginners don't matter.
>>
>> Now he's 19 and a Freshman at UVM Honors College.  Don't ask me how he
>> does it, but he's getting A's and B's while spending 2-3 hours a day
>> playing Guild Wars 2.   Out of 2 million players worldwide, he is ranked in
>> the top 150.   What's the attraction?   It's complex, social and accessible:
>>
>> 1.   SOCIAL FRATERNITY:  He is on a team ('guild') where he was
>> interviewed for two weeks to verify his skill level.   This involved
>> streaming his game play for observation and review by the team officers
>> before he was admitted.   Now he's been admitted it's clear it serves a
>> social purpose an an 'elite online fraternity'.   They use 'voice chat' to
>> coordinate their attacks online.
>>
>> 2.   ACCESSIBILITY:  It's available 24/7.   Patrick arranges his
>> competition schedule around his classes.   Millennials like Patrick do not
>> operate on a 9-5 schedule ... They operate in a 24/7 mode.  His guild
>> teammates live in Europe, Silicon Valley, etc.  They form teams for 'raids'
>> based on day-to-day accessibility.
>>
>> 3.   MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGE:  He has completely deconstructed the gaming
>> algorithms to increase his scores and attain his current rating, and writes
>> User Guides to help other players. It is obvious the mathematical
>> complexity aspect is a major attraction.
>>
>> 4.   CONSTANT IN-GAME FEEDBACK:   No 'slow rate hours' in his game.
>> There is constant action and obstacles to overcome.
>>
>> 5.   LOW BARRIERS TO ENTRY:   Patrick builds his own computers from
>> scratch since stock models don't have the graphics capabilities he looks
>> for.   He has dual 24" monitors, 7 fans for cooling, noise-canceling
>> headset and a memory keyboard that records his keystrokes for playback
>> which helps him kill certain monsters.  Total investment was about $1,700
>> but the ongoing costs are  FIOS Internet fees only.  Total cost = a big
>> tribander.
>>
>> You can see the parallels to Radiosport in all 5 aspects I described
>> above.   But you can also see how hard it is for Amateur Radio to compete
>> for Millennials' attention.
>>
>> A small Postscript:   As you can imagine, our dinner table conversation
>> frequently goes like this:  "Hey Pal, how about a little less gaming and
>> turning those few 'B's into all A's"?   To which I get the infamous
>> 'teenager blank stare' back.
>>
>> But as he's majoring in Business and Economics and will probably start his
>> own company one day, I don't push too hard.   It's clear he knows 'the
>> Millennial marketplace' better than I do.  Most importantly, when his
>> company goes public, he'll be a prospective client for me at UBS Private
>> Wealth Management :-)
>>
>> 73,
>>
>> Ken KE3X
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> CQ-Contest mailing list
>> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
>> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest
>>
> _______________________________________________
> CQ-Contest mailing list
> CQ-Contest at contesting.com
> http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/cq-contest